Leticia Diaz awoke before dawn to the din of trucks and a bulldozer rumbling up the rutted dirt road that runs through this village of wood-plank huts in the southern mountains of the southern state of Chiapas. She ran down to where villagers had piled rocks waist-high in a makeshift barricade meant to stop authorities from passing through on their way to rout peasants who had occupied a coffee plantation farther up the road, demanding that the land be divided among them.

A leftist candidate won the governor's race in Mexico's volatile southernmost state of Chiapas, edging out a rival backed by President Vicente Fox's party by nearly 6,300 votes, electoral officials said. The final results showed Juan Sabines Guerrero, of the Democratic Revolution Party, won 553,270 votes, compared with 546,988 for Jose Antonio Aguilar Bodegas, who was running with a coalition including the Institutional Revolutionary Party and Fox's National Action Party. An appeal is expected.

Clearing the way for the start of peace talks between the government and the Zapatista National Liberation Army, hundreds of rebel supporters left the negotiation site Friday night, driven away by a severe thunderstorm and the pleas of their leaders. After the village center was cleared, eight ski-masked rebel delegates to the talks told an open-air news conference that they had asked community coordinators to take their townspeople home.

Mexican police said they had broken up a vote-buying scheme in Chiapas on the eve of today's state elections, which will be closely watched amid national turmoil over the results of last month's presidential election. Four supporters of the Democratic Revolution Party were arrested Friday after authorities said they were caught telling residents they would not receive aid intended for Hurricane Stan victims unless they promised to support the party's gubernatorial candidate.

Try this for surreal nomenclature: The hamlet called Moises--that's Spanish for Moses--Gandhi is the capital of Ernesto Che Guevara township, not far from First of January and just northwest of 17th of November. But don't bother looking for these brazenly revolutionary names on any official map of Chiapas, the southeastern Mexican state where Maya Indians rebelled against the government Jan. 1, 1994.

Snipers have fired on army patrols in two incidents in Chiapas, shattering the tense military standoff in Mexico's southernmost state and giving a glimpse of what a guerrilla war threatened by the Zapatista National Liberation Army would be like. In a brief statement early Tuesday, Mexican Atty. Gen.

While guerrilla leader Subcommander Marcos hunkers down in his jungle hide-out, the gale of democratic change that roared through Mexico last month looks poised to reach even his southernmost stronghold today, raising hopes for peace here in the conflict-ridden state of Chiapas.

Sitting on the steps of a national immigration office in Mexico City, waiting hour after hour for a special visa to enter the southern state of Chiapas, Lorena Flores had one thought running through her head: "What exactly don't they want us to see there?" Last week, she had her answer. In an Indian village, Flores and a group of fellow Cal State Northridge students and professors sat down with an old woman, who cried as she told of the day men ransacked her home, leaving her with nothing.

In a major step to resolve the ongoing conflict in the southern state of Chiapas, President Ernesto Zedillo on Saturday replaced his interior minister--considered his top political operator--and ordered a new peace strategy for the impoverished region.

In an effort to salvage peace in the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico's Congress voted to let Zapatista rebels speak before lawmakers to promote an Indian rights bill. Legislators passed a measure requiring at least 100 members of the 628-seat Congress to be present when the rebels make their pitch. Rebel leader Subcommander Marcos said the Zapatistas accepted Congress' proposal and would postpone their return to the jungle, which had been scheduled for today.

Reflecting the mounting safety concerns plaguing Mexico's state-owned petroleum industry, the governor of Chiapas this week shut down a federally owned and operated oil well that he said posed a health and environmental hazard. It is believed to be the first time a state has shut down an installation of Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, an entity whose revenue funds more than 30% of the federal government's budget.

Two state policemen, two municipal officials and a civilian were killed in a fierce gun battle Tuesday in Tres Cruces, Mexico, as police were attempting to catch suspects in a shooting that killed two civilians in the remote Chiapas state community Sunday, authorities said.

Police arrested at least 20 alleged members of a paramilitary group in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. The Peace and Justice group has been blamed for the deaths of hundreds of people in clashes with supporters of the Zapatista rebels, who led a rebellion in the mid-1990s in the name of Indian rights. State Atty. Gen. Mariano Herran Salvatti said the men would be charged with homicide, cattle rustling and armed robbery.

A strong earthquake rattled southern Mexico, shattering windows and sending scared residents running from their homes. No injuries were immediately reported. The magnitude 6.4 quake was centered along the Pacific coast of the southern state of Chiapas, according to the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo.

In an effort to salvage peace in the southern state of Chiapas, Mexico's Congress voted to let Zapatista rebels speak before lawmakers to promote an Indian rights bill. Legislators passed a measure requiring at least 100 members of the 628-seat Congress to be present when the rebels make their pitch. Rebel leader Subcommander Marcos said the Zapatistas accepted Congress' proposal and would postpone their return to the jungle, which had been scheduled for today.

Ski-masked leaders of Mexico's Zapatista guerrillas met Monday with congressional mediators in the first serious attempt in nearly five years to address the demands that spurred the rebels' 1994 uprising in the southern state of Chiapas. Subcommander Marcos and 23 fellow commanders of the Zapatista National Liberation Army huddled behind closed doors with federal legislators in a university building in the Mexican capital to begin lobbying for Indian rights legislation.

The oldest "basketball" court in North America has been discovered in Chiapas, Mexico. The Maya ball court dates from 1400 B.C., at least five centuries older than any previously discovered court, a team from the University of British Columbia reports in today's Nature. The game, which had religious significance, involved tossing a rubber ball up and down a long, alley-shaped court and attempting to get it through a hoop mounted on one of its walls. Losers were sometimes put to death.

Mexican legislators trying to restart peace talks between the Zapatista rebels and Interior Minister Francisco Labastida prepared to travel Saturday to Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state, in a bid to get both sides to the negotiating table. Labastida said he would accept the intercession of a group of legislators after tensions were raised in Chiapas following one of the bloodiest clashes yet between Zapatistas and police.

Rebel leader Subcommander Marcos on Thursday took his campaign for indigenous rights into the heartland of the Mexican Revolution, placing a floral wreath on the spot where peasant hero Emiliano Zapata was assassinated 82 years ago. On the 13th day of a 2,100-mile trek from his base in the southern state of Chiapas to the nation's capital, Marcos pointedly followed Zapata's famous trail in the central state of Morelos.

Rebel leader Subcommander Marcos handed over his assault rifle and silver-plated revolver and left his jungle stronghold here Saturday on a risk-filled 2,000-mile caravan to Mexico City, raising hopes of an end to the seven-year-long Zapatista uprising and of greater rights for all of this country's indigenous peoples.